Conversion rate optimization is all about testing. Many companies get too bogged down in design and what they think looks best and will convert. At the end of the day, you don’t know until you test. At IMI, we have the tools, technology, and expertise to not only build well-optimized web pages but to test them once they go live. Our conversion rate optimization can not only save our client’s money but generate millions in revenue.
There are plenty of guides to marketing. From textbooks to online video tutorials, you can really take your pick. But, we felt that there was something missing — a guide that really starts at the beginning to equip already-intelligent professionals with a healthy balance of strategic and tactical advice. The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing closes that gap.
Search traffic remains one of the major sources of traffic and conversions to any website. Keep your organic search visibility in mind when working on your most important “money pages” (i.e. those that drive direct sales). In this article I’ll go you through both basic and advanced keyword research tactics for your product pages that will also positively impact conversions.

Companies may also be able to use a viral video that they did not create for marketing purposes. A notable example is the viral video "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird. After the initial success of the video, Mentos was quick to offer its support. They shipped EepyBird thousands of mints for their experiments. Coke was slower to get involved.[75]

Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28]
However, labelling such marketing as referral marketing isn’t very meaningful- anybody can tell anybody to tell everyone else about their stuff, and good stuff gets shared all the time, sometimes even if the originator asks for it to kept secret! It’s a lot more meaningful to save the “referral marketing” label primarily for distinct, deliberately solicited referrals.

Definition: Unique Selling Proposition or USP is the one feature or the perceived benefit of a good which makes it unique from the rest of the competing brands in the market. It is that very reason which motivates a buyer to purchase that product even though it might be costlier than other products. Description: Unique Selling Proposition or USP is a very important concept used during the time when a company promotes its product through its advertisements in both TV as well as print media which eventually attracts a consumer to buy a particular product. The key to boost the sales of the product effectively through advertising is to highlight the USP of the product prominently. Unless you highlight the USP, consumers will not be tempted to buy your product. Every product should have its own USP, which makes it stand apart from other products in the similar category. USP is different for different products. Let’s take an example of a restaurant which is very famous across the world for its quick Subway Sandwiches. The company makes the sandwiches healthier for consumers. Consumers who are looking for a quick meal can walk into any subway outlet and get a quick sandwich made, which contains nutritional value. In this way the company is able to create its own niche market across town in India. The USP of the product is a nutritious sandwich at an affordable price. USP is a very important component in developing the product. A strong unique selling proposition makes you stand apart and also plays an important role in branding your product. But, USP alone can guarantee to a product’s success. Superior product quality and at par service, both before and after-sale are very important in creating the foundations of a market for a product. Always remember, with a distinct USP, the company doesn’t even have to bother about competition because if you have developed something which has not been developed by others, then you are the only player or a market leader in that specific product category (Example – iPpod by Apple).

Alright, you’re ready to publish your video. You shot the footage, edited it together, added music and a voice over, and exported it for the web. The next step is to get your video online so your audience can start viewing and sharing it. You have several options for hosting videos online, and in this section, we’ll talk about some of the best ones.

Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic: Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic all are aspects used by marketers to help advocate digital advertising. Cookies are a form of digital advertising, which are tracking tools within desktop devices; causing difficulty, with shortcomings including deletion by web browsers, the inability to sort between multiple users of a device, inaccurate estimates for unique visitors, overstating reach, understanding frequency, problems with ad servers, which cannot distinguish between when cookies have been deleted and when consumers have not previously been exposed to an ad. Due to the inaccuracies influenced by cookies, demographics in the target market are low and vary (Whiteside, 2016).[42] Another element, which is affected within digital marketing, is ‘viewabilty’ or whether the ad was actually seen by the consumer. Many ads are not seen by a consumer and may never reach the right demographic segment. Brand safety is another issue of whether or not the ad was produced in the context of being unethical or having offensive content. Recognizing fraud when an ad is exposed is another challenge marketers face. This relates to invalid traffic as premium sites are more effective at detecting fraudulent traffic, although non-premium sites are more so the problem (Whiteside, 2016).[42]

A frequently used example of early viral marketing is Hotmail, the free web-based email service launched in 1996 that included in its users' outgoing messages an embedded advertisement and direct link inviting recipients to sign up for an account. This practice led to the fastest growth among user-based media companies at the time. Another example that illustrates how varied viral marketing can be is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The ice bucket challenge existed before The ALS Association utilized it to raise awareness and generate donations, but the massive dissemination on social media of ALS Ice Bucket videos created a worldwide sensation that not only increased ALS awareness tremendously, but also raised $115 million in donations to the Association in the summer of 2014 alone.
Video and mobile go hand in hand. 90% of consumers watch videos on their mobile. From Q3 of 2013, mobile video views have grown more than 233 percent. YouTube reports mobile video consumption rises 100% every year. Since people like to watch videos on the go, and the number of smartphone users is growing, your video audience keeps getting bigger and bigger.
The effectiveness of a referral program depends, in part, on when a user is prompted to make a referral. If a user is prompted to make a referral right after an unhappy experience your chance of them making a referral is low because they don’t want to tell their friends about bad products. On the flip side, if a user is prompted right after a happy moment they are much more likely to make a referral even if the have previously had a bad experience.
Affiliates are most successful when the products they promote match the interests of their followers and subscribers. In addition, many successful affiliate marketers advise recommending and promoting only products that the affiliate is personally familiar with. That’s because familiarity with the product, program, or service helps build trust between the affiliate and end-user.
Working with people outside of your usual industry can help you create a buzz for both of your companies. The TV show The Walking Dead teamed up with UC Irvine to create an open online course on what a zombie apocalypse would be like. Zombie lovers ate it up like free brains. Both the show and the university benefitted. HP teamed up with Kiva to allow HP employees an extra $25 to donate to the Kiva project of their choice. Both HP and Kiva gained exposure, while worthy charitable causes received funding.

Our Website Design & Development team has the skill and creativity to take your vision and translate that into an amazing interactive experience. Our designers and usability experts use best practices for combining amazing designs with an effective user experience. Our web developers and SEO developers work together to create websites that have both aesthetic appeal and SEO friendly code structure. Our proprietary methods for SEO website development will ensure that you hit the ground running upon launch!

Viral content usually has a well-designed viral strategy behind it, it is, in part, also due to luck, but creativity and preparation are also extremely important… for this reason, to get to know this world a little better, I would like to tell you today what the definition of this concept actually is, how a viral campaign works, the advantages or viral marketing and show you our favorite examples.

It’s simple: the more positive experiences the buyer reads, the more inclined they are to make a purchase. By adding your products to review and lifestyle affiliate sites, you‘ll be found organically for terms that they rank for, compete better with giants like Amazon, and will get more recommendations and exposure relatively quickly. Social proof is powerful:

Hi, thanks for a great blog. In our office we have a debate going on about whether all of this video hype that we’re experiencing from basically everywhere today is really just, well, a hype.. In line with more and more companies using video marketing, text as we know it might fade out, pictures as we know them might fade out, but if everybody starts using video, what will then happen? Today, video is commonly seen as a way to stand out and capture users’ attention, but what if every brand start publishing video solely? Will we still want to see as much video? Will we need to capture the viewers’ attention in 2 seconds instead of 10? What do you think it requires for companies to succeed with videos and stay on top if everybody else is doing the same?

An elegantly straightforward process, affiliate marketing via reviews, blogs, social media, and other platforms is a new frontier in marketing that’s just waiting to be utilized. Follow the tips included in this article, and you’ll be able to engage your audience, convert passive readers into active consumers, and enhance your paycheck one click at a time.

Let’s say you have a promotions page where you’re promoting a product via affiliate links. If you currently get 5,000 visits/month at a 2% conversion rate, you have 100 referrals. To get to 200 referrals, you can either focus on getting 5,000 more visitors, or simply increasing the conversion rate to 4%. Which sounds easier? Instead of spending months building domain authority with blogging and guest posts to get more organic traffic, you just have to increase the conversion rate by 2%. This can include landing page optimization, testing your calls-to-action, and having a conversion rate optimization strategy in place. By testing and optimizing your site, you’ll get far better results with much less effort.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising, commonly referred to as Search Engine Marketing, delivers targeted traffic and conversions and will yield results faster than organic search engine optimization. Successful PPC marketing programs offer incredible revenue and brand-building opportunities. However, without a thorough understanding of how PPC works, it is very easy to mismanage valuable advertising budgets. That’s where we come in!

Content marketing: Writing articles or blog posts related to your business and submitting them to be published on other websites is another great way to reach your target market for free. Although mass distribution of a single article across the web doesn't have the same SEO benefits it once had, submitting exclusive articles to a specific site can still reap many rewards including SEO, boosting your credibility, and reaching a market that might not otherwise know about you. Because writing can be time-consuming, you may want to consider how you can repurpose what you write into other forms of content or with new angles for other audiences.
Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[19]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[59][60]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.
Another disadvantage is that even an individual or small group of people can harm image of an established brand. For instance Dopplegnager is a term that is used to disapprove an image about a certain brand that is spread by anti-brand activists, bloggers, and opinion leaders. The word Doppelganger is a combination of two German words Doppel (double) and Ganger (walker), thus it means double walker or as in English it is said alter ego. Generally brand creates images for itself to emotionally appeal to their customers. However some would disagree with this image and make alterations to this image and present in funny or cynical way, hence distorting the brand image, hence creating a Doppelganger image, blog or content (Rindfleisch, 2016).
If you run a B2B blog, and you want to promote affiliate deals (but you don’t want to sell), check out RevResponse. This affiliate network will pay you to promote free resources to your readers. You’ll be paid between $1.50 and $20 per download. The value to the advertiser is that they will be able to connect with your audience. If you run a content marketing program, you can use this platform to reach audiences outside of your existing visitors.
When asking for referrals, most often companies forget the target group they are looking at. Every friend or colleague of your customer may not be a prospect and get a long list of prospects, spending time on them may not bring the desired result. In such cases, the company can outline a client profile- desired age group, income, interests, industry, gender, hobbies so that results would be better.
Hi, thanks for a great blog. In our office we have a debate going on about whether all of this video hype that we’re experiencing from basically everywhere today is really just, well, a hype.. In line with more and more companies using video marketing, text as we know it might fade out, pictures as we know them might fade out, but if everybody starts using video, what will then happen? Today, video is commonly seen as a way to stand out and capture users’ attention, but what if every brand start publishing video solely? Will we still want to see as much video? Will we need to capture the viewers’ attention in 2 seconds instead of 10? What do you think it requires for companies to succeed with videos and stay on top if everybody else is doing the same?
The disadvantages to consider with viral marketing include the nuisance factor. Due to the large amount of email people receive daily, viral marketing messages may be viewed as spam. Another consideration is negative marketing buzz. A message may not be construed as intended, and could be discussed in a negative manner. Viral marketing can also be hard to measure.
Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential."[17] Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature.[citation needed]
Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives a commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.
In 2014, A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge was among the best viral marketing challenges examples in the social network. Millions of people on the social media started filming themselves, pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads and sharing the video with their friends. The challenge was created to give support for fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease. People finished the challenge and then nominated the next person they knew on the social media to take the same challenge. By following this trend, Ice Bucket Challenge became a 'fab' on social media with many online celebrities such as Tyler Oakley, Zoe Sugg and huge celebrities and entrepreneurs like Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates participating.[76] Until September 2014, over 2.4 million ice bucket-related videos had been posted on Facebook, and 28 million people had uploaded, commented on or liked ice bucket-related posts. And about 3.7 million videos had been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtags #ALSicebucketchallenge and #icebucketchallenge.[77] The ALS association didn't invent the ice bucket challenge, but they sure received a huge amount of donation from this activity. It raised a reported $220 million worldwide for A.L.S. organisations, and this amount is thirteen times as much donation as what it had in the whole preceding year in just eight weeks.[78]
Online networking, when executed correctly, allows you to build valuable relationships in online forums and groups that can help you advance your business. You could meet peers and fellow experts with whom you could collaborate or partner up with for a project, or you could provide value to your target audience by sharing your knowledge and winning over some customers as a result. No matter what, though, the goal with this type of marketing is purely relationship building and not selling outright.
Tripods range tremendously in price, and the quality of your tripod should depend on the level of camera and lens you have. If you’re shooting with your phone, you can get by with a table mount like the Arkon Tripod Mount or a full-size tripod like the Acuvar 50” Aluminum Tripod. For a DSLR, Manfrotto makes a variety of trustworthy tripods starting with the Manfrotto BeFree and increasing in quality and price from there.